Teen stabbing topic at East Stroudsburg school board meeting

EAST STROUDSBURG — At about 3 p.m. on a recent Tuesday afternoon, a sophomore at East Stroudsburg High School-North was getting off the bus in the Saw Creek private development, when trouble followed.

DAN BERRETT

EAST STROUDSBURG — At about 3 p.m. on a recent Tuesday afternoon, a sophomore at East Stroudsburg High School-North was getting off the bus in the Saw Creek private development, when trouble followed.

According to state police, a fellow student tried to yank the chain from his neck. The two students struggled. The would-be thief pulled a knife and stabbed the other student in the left hand.

Some of the fallout from that incident came home to roost at the meeting of East Stroudsburg's school board Monday night.

"The fact of the matter is, the young man's afraid," said Romanay Lashley, mother of the young man who was allegedly attacked. "The learning environment has collapsed."

After the attack, a meeting between the student and the school principal, Stuart Tripler, was meant to be reassuring. Tripler advised the student to ask the school resource officer, a Pennsylvania state trooper, to escort him to and from the bathroom.

The reputed stabber had been dealt with, although student confidentiality laws prevented anyone from the district from being more specific on Monday. But administrators were worried that the young man's attacker may have associates in the school who could pose harm.

This just made the boy more worried. He has been at home since the attempted robbery two weeks ago.

"Can I guarantee his safety 100 percent?" Tripler said at Monday's board meeting. "No. I can't guarantee my own safety every day. We do our best."

The district's administration offered Lashley and her son a stopgap solution: send the boy to the high school on the South campus while the police finish investigating the incident.

Superintendent Rachael Heath told Lashley she had to drive her son to and from the school. But as a single parent working full-time, Lashley said it would prove difficult. She came to the board to appeal for a waiver.

Heath said that her administration had tried to purge the district's schools of trouble-makers. "We are trying to get these students who cause problems out of our buildings," she said. "Our buildings are not unsafe."

Earlier in the meeting, 18 students had been placed in alternative schools.

"I as a board member will not tolerate these punks in the schools," said board member Bob Gress. "It's up to the kids to tell on these kids."

In the end, the board voted to make a short-term exception to its rules; they would not force Lashley, who is running for a seat on the school board, to provide her son's transportation to the South campus for the rest of the year.

In other news, the district voted to fill the seat vacated by Michal Peterson, who resigned last month in protest over the guilty verdict handed down in the trial of Monroe County committeeman John Curtin.

By a 6-0 vote, they selected Robert Huffman, who served on the board for 16 years and retired at the end of 2005. Six residents had offered their services to the district.